An owner's field guide, 2026
What your business is worth, and what buyers will pay
Only 20 to 30% of businesses that go to market actually sell, and the top reason is the gap between the owner's price and the buyer's. This 34-page guide names the five discounts behind that gap and the order to fix them in.
An Owner's Field Guide
The Price Gap
- 34 pages
- PDF, 11.7 MB
- Instant download
- Every number cited and dated
- For owners at $1M to $5M EBITDA
- Free, and no sales call
What this guide covers
Most owner-built businesses that go to market never sell, and the single biggest reason is the gap between the owner’s price and the buyer’s price.
That gap is not sentiment. Buyers close it with five specific discounts, applied so consistently that we named them: financial quality, owner dependence, customer concentration, revenue durability, and bench strength.
Each one is measurable, each one carries a market price, and each one is fixable. This guide covers all five in the order you should fix them, with a 24-month sequence and a 15-question self-check.
Last updated August 2026
The numbers owners learn too late
20-30%
of businesses that go to market actually sell. For every ten owners who list, seven or eight take the sign back down.
Morgan & Westfield
4.1x
average EBITDA multiple on deals between $1M and $5M of enterprise value. The multiple is a risk score, and you control it.
IBBA and M&A Source, Market Pulse
33%
of advisors name unrealistic seller value expectations as the top reason a business failed to sell.
IBBA and M&A Source, Market Pulse
80%
of a typical owner’s net worth sits inside the business. The price gap is not a negotiating detail, it is your retirement.
Practitioner and exit planning research
The five discounts, in the order you should fix them
Make the books tell the truth
Clean, normalized, buyer-tested financials come first. Everything a buyer cannot verify gets discounted, and poor financial records rank third on the list of deal-killing seller mistakes.
Get out of the machine
Owner dependence is the most expensive discount and the most fixable. If the business cannot run without you, the buyer is purchasing a job rather than an asset, and they price it that way.
Spread the revenue
Customer concentration quietly caps your multiple. One name carrying the revenue is a risk the buyer inherits, so they pay less for it or ask you to carry it in an earnout.
Make the revenue repeat
Contracted and recurring revenue is the strongest multiple lever there is. Revenue that has to be resold every January prices lower than revenue that arrives on its own.
Build the bench
A second layer of leadership is what the buyer is actually buying. Without it, the business is one resignation away from a problem, and the multiple reflects that.
Plus a 24-month sequence, a 15-question self-check you can score yourself, a full glossary of the terms buyers will use, and every number in the book cited and dated.
Free. Instant download. We never share your email.
Written by the people who price the work
Kevin Simpson leads valuation and deal work at BuiltWorth Advisory, with decades of operating and business coaching experience behind him. He wrote this guide with Aaron Truax and Jarrod Stanton, who run the buyer campaigns and the diligence side of the same deals. All three have owned and grown companies.
The work of a lifetime deserves more than a formula and a number.
Questions owners ask
Owners of businesses at roughly $1M to $5M of EBITDA who expect to exit within five years. The math and the multiples throughout are specific to that range.
No. It is 34 pages of the sequencing we use on live engagements, with every number cited and dated. There is no call to book and no obligation attached to the download.
The guide lays out a 24-month sequence, because that is how long the highest-value fixes take to show up in verifiable numbers. Some of it moves faster. The financial cleanup can start this quarter.
That is the better time to read it. Owners who prepare ahead command a meaningful premium, and the fixes only work if you start before a buyer is at the table asking questions.
A free two-minute assessment that scores your gap and names what is holding back the price. It is the natural next step after the guide, and there is no sale obligation.
Read it before a buyer prices you
Free, 34 pages, every number cited. The owners who close the gap start before anyone is at the table asking questions.
Free. Instant download. We never share your email.
Prove the worth, then get paid for it.